Biological Sciences at CSN

Upcoming Topics:

Dec 5

The formation of the Earth was a hot, violent process that drove away volatiles like water and carbon compounds, and yet we have oceans and carbon-based life. Why?

Origin of Earth's Volatile's

Past articles from this semester:

Nov 21

CRISPER-Cas9 took the genetic engineering world by storm but it has some major limitations. This new paper shows how CRISPER PRIME surpasses those limitations with capabilities that now "might help researchers tackle nearly 90% of the more than 75,000 disease-associated DNA variants." This has made the biotech world go crazy!

Search and replace genome editing without double strand breaks or donor DNA

Sept 5

C-type asteroids are rich in organic compounds, including many of the precursors of life. Four and a half years ago the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, launched the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to the carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu. Its extremely complex mission: Travel to the asteroid. Obit and map it. Deploy four rovers. Land. Fire a projectile to collect a sample of surface material that's been exposed to space. Take off. Deploy a shaped-charge explosive to bore a deep hole. Back away. Deploy a camera to watch the explosion. Back farther away, behind the asteroid to dodge debris. Fire the explosive. Return. Map the new hole. It's done all this! Next up: Land and collect pristine sub-surface material exposed by the explosion. Take off again. Return to Earth, leaving December of this year and reaching Earth December of next year. Deploy a sample-return capsule to enter Earth's atmosphere and land in Australia while the main spacecraft goes on to another asteroid. We'll be looking at three brief papers detailing what we've learned so far. There's a summary page, " Traveling to the origins of the Solar System," accompanying the papers.

Summary Page - Traveling to the origins of the Solar System Asteroid - data from the Hayabusa2 mission support collisional evolution of a pristine body

Sept 19

There are 200 million cases of malarial infections a year. With mosquitoes becoming more resistant to insecticides, a new transgenic fungus genetically engineered with a spider venom gene has potential to help in this crisis. How did they make it? How effective is it? Will they be able to release it in the wild? Let's talk about it!

Transgenic Metarhizium rapidly kills mosquitoes in a malaria endemic region of Burkina Faso

Oct 3

Is the change in Las Vegas street lighting increasing our risk of West Nile Virus? Probably.

West Nile Virus and Nighttime Lighting

Oct 17 - One Book One College Event

After seeing how poorly scientists are trained at communicating, Alan Alda set out to make changes and give lessons inspired by improvisation and scientific research in the new One Book/ One College selection If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? We will talk about how using improvisational exercises, storytelling, and other techniques Alda was able to turn scientists into better communicators.

You can find the book at our CSN Library or purchase it from Amazon

Nov 7

Full-spectrum white light: healthy in the daytime, a potent health risk at night.

Electric light, particularly at night, disrupts human circadian rhythmicity

Supplemental reading - Lighting for the human circadian clock